forgetting

But there are no new ideas still waiting in the wings to save us as women, as human. There are only old and forgotten ones, new combinations, extrapolations and recognitions from within ourselves…¹

I undertook to let myself be borne on by the force of any living life: Forgetting. Unlearning, yielding to the unforeseeable modifications that forgetting imposes on the sedimented knowledge, culture, and beliefs one has traversed.²

I encountered something that had been there for a while—but I hadn’t payed enough attention to it or I didn’t yet have the language for it or I hadn’t found it yet or I hadn’t waited long enough.

I am learning to love. Or: I am re-learning to love. (as if I had never known before)

Or: I am forgetting to love.

Forgetting in order to love. Forgetting in order to make space; in order to remember; in order to re-member with the gut; in order to trust.

I begin again. I find myself in some mist, off the path but sitting in front of the computer. I find myself a little bit closer to something warmer. I’ve followed the feeling for some time. Maybe this is what kills me. Maybe I’m a little bit closer to love—even though I can’t see all too well. I seem to have lost my glasses or they don’t work like they used to.

Old lucidity is replaced with new lucidity. Lucidity that’s been diluted in a pool of water. Lucidity that’s been left to float along on little gusts of wind, warmed by its travels toward the sun. The lucidity of eyes burnt by the screen and mind boiled by the network.

It’s a long way back to earth.